The Bookworm (1850) by Carl SpitzwegGrohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
In the 19th century, authors sought to authentically relate daily life in their stories, whether historical fiction or fairy tale.
Today, these works of literature provide readers with a chance to better understand the past. A book may detail a specific process of industry or it may describe the modern cities in which the characters lived, and how people thought about their surroundings and situations.
A Garret Garden
The rise of cities in the 19th century meant more people lived on top of each other—literally in the case of apartments and tenements. Window boxes let people living in cities add a little bit of green to their lives and attempt to recreate gardens in an urban setting.
A Garret Garden
In the case of Carl Spitzweg’s The Garret I, a man living in the city of Munich enjoys caring for his little garden.
Flowers bloom and the box is overflowing with ivy.
Another Garret
The man in The Garret II, on the other hand, appears to use his window box as an excuse to socialize with his neighbors.
The plants are brown and wilting; the man’s attention is drawn to the woman at the window across the way.
Hans Christian Anderson, a writer from 19th century Denmark, incorporated window boxes of flowers in his fairy tale The Snow Queen. Kai and Gerda are two children living next to each other in the attic apartments of two buildings. All summer long they climb through the window to visit or sit under the roses that grow across their window boxes. When winter arrives, the wicked Snow Queen steals Kai away, and Gerda sets off on a journey to the frozen north to rescue her friend.
In the city there are so many houses, not everyone can have a garden. Most people make do with a few flowers in a flowerpot. But once there were two children who did have a garden a bit bigger than a flowerpot. They weren’t brother and sister, but they loved each other just as if they were. Their families were next-door neighbors, right up in the attics. Where the roofs joined, they each had a little window, face to face, and you only had to clamber over the gutter to get from one window to the other.
Their fathers each put a wooden box across this gutter, to grow herbs for the kitchen. There were little rose trees, too, one in each box, that grew like anything. What with sweet peas trailing over the sides of the boxes and the rose trees twining their branches over the windows, the little garden was just perfect.
The Snow Queen
1844
Hans Christian Anderson
English Version by Neil Phillip, 1989
Les Misérables is Victor Hugo’s sweeping epic about 19th century France that details the lives of dozens of characters over the course of decades. Some characters are college students, but others are bookbinders, factory workers, or lawyers.
One of the most memorable characters is Monseigneur Bienvenue (Mr. Welcome), the kindly bishop. The Bishop is a very generous individual: he gave his mansion to a city for use as a hospital, he used gifts and donations to him to give more to charities around his diocese.
Polishing Day (1800/1900) by Jehan Georges VibertGrohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
His one indulgence that he sets his dinner table
with the fine silverware and silver candlesticks
gifted to him from his family.
“Monseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been stolen!”
As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible. The coping of the wall had been torn away.
“Stay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into Cochefilet Lane. Ah, the abomination! He has stolen our silver!”
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes, and said gently to Madame Magloire:—
“And, in the first place, was that silver ours?”
Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the Bishop went on:—
“Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver wrongfully. It belonged to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man, evidently.”
Les Misérables
1862
Victor Hugo
English translation by Isabel Hapgood, 1887
The Miners (ca. 1890) by Constantin-Emile MeunierGrohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering
In the coal mining industries of European countries, there was precedent for women to engage in wage labor and work for a mining company.
These working women might have held positions on the surface of the mining site, tasked with tool repair, or they might have couriered the repaired tools down the tunnels and baskets of coal back up.
Some women worked as miners, traveling down to extract coal from the depths of the earth. The seated figure in this painting is one such woman.
In Emil Zola's Germinal, a novel set in a company town by a mine, several women support their families by working in the mine. This passage is taken from early on in the novel, when a young man new to mining arrives to the town. On his first day in the mine, experienced worker Catherine takes him under her wing. She is amused that he assumes she is a boy, just because she is wearing a mining uniform and works in such a dangerous industry.
"Thanks, mate. Ah! you're a good chap, you are!"
She began to laugh, looking at him in the red light of the furnaces, which lit them up. It amused her that he should take her for a boy, still slender, with her knot of hair hidden beneath the cap. He also was laughing, with satisfaction, and they remained, for a moment, both laughing in each other's faces with radiant cheeks.
…
"You are a girl, then!" he exclaimed, stupefied.
She replied in her cheerful way, without blushing:
"Of course. You've taken your time to find it out!"
Germinal
1885
Emil Zola
English translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894
Stories and art both illustrate life from long ago. By pairing them together in an exhibit such as this, we can create a more complete idea of daily life in the nineteenth century. Using descriptions provided by artists, whether in writing or painting, we understand historic daily life of people in cities, convents, or company towns.
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